After Christmas Miracle

Sometimes, Christmas miracles happen after Christmas. Read about it (here).

 

A Magic Fish

This short piece of fiction was inspired by a post Christmas trip to the mall, where I learned magic can occur in unexpected ways. Read about it (here).

Goosie and Bonkers

 When CJ was five, I took him with me to pick up our dry cleaning. He asked if we could check out the pet store next door. He enjoyed being licked by puppies and kittens when he poked his little fingers into their cages, but the goldfish captured his attention most. Read (here) what happened when two unfortunate goldfish lived with us.

 

A Princess And Stolen Gold

She was a real princess, an infanta of Spain, and I’d come thousands of miles to pay her homage. She wasn’t exactly pretty; she possessed those unfortunate characteristics that, had she lived a long life, would have twisted her sweetness into the grotesqueness so characteristic of her family. She was a Habsburg, and no one would remember her today were it not for the sublime brush of Velàzquez, her father’s famous painter. As I gazed upon her, I felt something peculiar happening…deep in my pants, a downward motion completely beyond my control. Princess or no princess, I was about to let loose!

I’d come to Madrid to fulfill a childhood fantasy: I’d grown up in California and had been raised on tales of Spanish chivalry and pirates of the Spanish Main. As an artist, Spain loomed large in my imagination for another reason: in Madrid, The Prado Museum contained the greatest collection of Italian and Spanish paintings on Earth. Velàzquez was one of the most accomplished painters who ever lived, and in my opinion the best portrait painter. His painting, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor) was arguably the greatest picture ever painted. I’d come to check it out with my own eyes. But greed came between me and Velàzquez’ masterpiece.

I entered the Prado and stood in line to purchase my ticket. It was a chilly day in late winter and the queue in front of the ticket counter was uncharacteristically short. After handing over a dozen pesetas for my ticket (this was before Spain went on the Euro) I passed into a chamber with hooks on the walls for coats. An attendant, nose buried in a newspaper, was doing a poor job of guarding the coats. I noticed that one of my shoelaces had come undone. Plunking down on one of the empty benches, I leaned down to retie the shoelace and my eyes widened at what I saw—Spanish treasure.

Projecting from beneath my bench was a thick rubber mat with slots in it. These slots were filled with glinting Spanish coins, like a giant coin tray in a bank. Some of these coins were worth as much as five or ten US dollars. Thousands of tourists must have dropped them while struggling out of their coats. For a moment I felt like Edmond Dantès discovering the treasure of Monte Cristo.

I looked up. I could hear snoring coming from behind the attendant’s newspaper. I wish I could report that my Catholic upbringing had immunized me from such temptations but, unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Before yielding to temptation, I glanced around the room for security cameras. When I saw none, I began plucking coins and shoving them into my pockets. I figured I’d stop in a minute or two when other tourists arrived, but none did. When my pockets could hold no more, I waddled out of the chamber, feeling rich as Midas as I sought out the little princess.

The coat chamber may have been empty, but there was a crowd gathered in front of Las Meninas. I pushed my way forward and got my first clear glimpse of her. The critics hadn’t lied. She was a miracle: Velàzquez had created Infanta Margarita and her entourage from a loose salad of brushstrokes that at a certain distance, like perfect pitch in music, transmogrified into the semblance of a living breathing person.

For those who haven’t looked closely at this painting, it’s worth the effort. Hundreds of years before the invention of the camera, Velàsquez defied convention by painting nearly everything slightly out of focus. The dog in the foreground being kicked by the dwarf is blurry up close, as is everything except for the face drawing the viewer’s eye to the center of the composition, the face of the little princess. And over on the left, Velàzquez has depicted himself standing before an enormous painting (Las Meninas?) palette in hand. But what is he painting? The little princess’ back is to him. And hanging on the wall in the background; is that a mirror? Reflected in it are the images of the princess’ parents, the King and Queen. Are they the subject of this painting, or are they standing in the doorway, an impromptu visit to their favorite painter’s studio as the artist prepares to paint their daughter? Art experts have been staring at this remarkable painting for hundreds of years, asking themselves the question: What the hell is going on here? What is this magical portal to seventeen century Spain all about?

I had come a great distance to study this painting, to take my turn at solving this mystery, but I was thwarted by greed, the sort that had roiled the blood of Spanish conquistadors. The princess’ eyes seemed to lock on me, and I was suddenly filled with unbearable shame. The ill-gotten treasure in my pockets seemed to burn through the fabric of my pants, branding my skin—a short-lived agony because at that moment the stitching in both pockets tore open and coins rained down my pant legs, a symphony of clinking and clattering on the marble floor as coins piled up at my feet.

Before bolting from the room as fast as I could, I caught one last glimpse of the little princess. Three hundred year old paint is brittle yet hard as cement, unchangeable, but in that fleeting moment I swear that long-dead little girl’s face had changed. She was laughing at me.

Goosie and Bonkers

When CJ was five, I took him with me to pick up some dry cleaning. He asked if we could check out the pet store next door. He enjoyed having his little fingers licked by puppies and kittens when he stuck his fingers into their cages, but the goldfish captured his attention most. There was a big tank with ten goldfish for a buck. CJ begged for two fish. Since they were cheap, and flushable, I said yes. By the time we left the store, I’d spent nearly thirty dollars for a bowl and gravel, fish food and the coolest little castle CJ had ever seen. CJ held the plastic bag containing the two fish and tried his best to keep the water from jiggling as we drove home.

He named them Goosie and Bonkers, for reasons known only to him. They lived for a while on top of our TV. One day Mrs. Chatterbox and I were going over bills in the kitchen, a situation not made any easier by my unnecessary purchase of two little freeloaders in a goldfish bowl, when CJ came up to me and said, “Daddy, could you not talk so loud ‘cause Goosie and Bonkers are sleeping.”

Uh-oh! I went to check and Goosie and Bonkers were belly up in the water. They were asleep alright, eternal sleep! I didn’t have the emotional energy to explain “death” to CJ, so when Mrs. C. was reading to him I flushed the two dead fish and went back to the pet store to purchase another Goosie and Bonkers.

A few days later CJ again asked me to keep my voice down because his goldfish were taking another nap. I checked; once again Goosie and Bonkers had flat-lined. I performed another flushing ceremony and headed for the pet store where I chose a heartier and more expensive set of replacements. As I drove home, I noticed that the new guys didn’t look much like the old Goosie and Bonkers. I hoped CJ wouldn’t notice.

He didn’t, but a few days later these fish joined the others. I should have explained to CJ that things are dead when they take certain kinds of naps, but I chickened out and headed back to the pet store. This time I took no chances and bought the most expensive goldfish available, fish so hearty that they were declared environmental pests in certain parts of Asia. They bore no resemblance to the original Goosie and Bonkers.

These poor creatures suffered the same fate as the others. I could no longer postpone the inevitable; it was time to tell CJ the truth, or get a bank loan to buy more fish. CJ came into the family room and spotted the empty bowl. “Daddy, where are Goosie and Bonkers?”

Mrs. C. busied herself in the kitchen, but she was listening to every word. I proceeded carefully, not wanting to shatter our little boy’s bubble of innocence. “Come here, CJ; Daddy wants to talk to you.”

He approached and I scooped him up and put him on my knee. “I need to tell you something.”

“Yes, Daddy?”

My throat suddenly went dry.

I could see the tears in Sue’s eyes---she was such a softy! We’d been married long enough for me to be able to read her mind; she was cautioning me to tread carefully.

“I need to tell you something about Goosie and Bonkers.”

“Yes, Daddy?” He looked just like a blue-eyed Hummel.

“You noticed that they’re not in their bowl?”

“Uh-huh. Where are they?”

The moment of truth had come. It was time to be honest with him. “Here’s the thing,

CJ, there’s a good reason Goosie and Bonkers aren’t in their bowl…”

“Yes, Daddy?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, here’s the thing…they’re not in their bowl because they…”

“They what, Daddy?” He blinked his soft lashes at me. “What did Goosie and

Bonkers do?”

Damn, I couldn’t do it! I blurted out, “They ran away!”

I felt guilty lying to him, but I breathed a sigh of relief when he said, “I guess they wanted to go home.”

Did you ever lie to a child? Confession, they say, is good for the soul.